Urbanization and its Discontents

Tonight I did my usual commuter calculus:

2(subway) + 87% humidity + 3(busker) = the bus is a better bet

30(oz. afternoon coffee) + 5min. jog to catch the 6:42 = pee now and wait for the 7:04

So I got on the bus, which is a pretty nice bus. There's the paisley shirt lady and the trash bag guy and hipster dude and the girl who talks on her cell phone about the Atkins diet:

"no, really, I put ranch dressing on everything......on a Western omelette.......it's totally good......no, I know, it totally does sound gross, but it's not......no, it's awesome."

So I was having a reasonably happy ride home until we passed Grossman's Bargain Outlet. And I saw a sign that said: "Sheds, $398."

And I was overwhelmed with longing.

Or if not precisely overwhelmed, at least well and thoroughly whelmed.

It was an uncertain and inchoate longing, but all the more powerful because of it. It was like the crush I had on Miss Husby when I was eleven or twelve. The desire was so strong precisely because I couldn't quite imagine what it would be like to satisfy it (despite some very precise drawings my friend Billy had shown me).

I don't know where I would put a shed. My "yard" is smaller than any respectable shed.

I don't know what I would put in a shed. I'm handy enough, but I don't have any tools that don't fit neatly in my tool box.

And yet the fact remains: I want a shed.

This isn't like my more regular commodity-fetishistic longing for pants and cars and Herman's Hermits CDs.

This is existential.

Sartre warned us that modernity had left us with a God-shaped hole. He didn't tell me that city life would leave me with a shed-shaped hole.

Hurts So Good

I used to hate writing letters of recommendation. I would get page fright, and agonize over every word.

But how often do you get to spend that much time and care and even anxiety to say something kind?

Not very often.

It's pretty great, really.

Intimations of Mortality

More notes from the library:

After I stopped laughing about the lusty Germans* I started thinking about all the books in the library. 13 million of them. That's a lot of books.

I started sort of idly calculating how many of those I could read. Now I'm no math whiz, but the answer was something like: not that damned many.

If I read 150 books a year (which is optimistic) and live another 40 years (even more optimistic), that works out to be 6,000 books. Which is a lot less than 13 million.

Factoring in that sometimes weeks go by and I don't read anything longer than a dirty limerick, and that I reread books I like, often several times, well the number shrinks even further. Maybe 4,000.

Now it's not like I thought I was going to live forever, but this puts the whole "all flesh is grass" thing in pretty stark terms. What the ratio of 4000 to 13 million? Pretty damned small.

So I've been taking stock of how I've spent my time. It's not exactly what I want written in my obituary.

Sleeping: 12 years

Vacuuming: 32 hours

Listening to "Fear of Music": 1 day

Listening to "Fear of a Black Planet": 1/2 day

Listening to "Fear": 1985

Listening to the "Law and Order" theme music: 11 hours

Smoking: 100 days

Thinking about smoking since quitting: 4 years, 2 months, 17 days

Watching Buffy: 2 weeks

Making lists: 13 days


ugh, I hate taking stock.

Well, I better go. There's Firefly marathon on the Sci-Fi channel.

*yeah, I know it's wrong to perpetuate cultural stereotypes. I'm sorry. For penance, I will kiss the next German I come across. Especially if it's Jutta from the front office. Rowr.

The Comedy Writes Itself

The good news is that Bush is softening his stance on Iran.

The better news is (from a comic standpoint) that he is emphasizing literacy as a means to democracy in the Middle East.

It seems redundant to make a joke.

I wonder how many ekelectic "Shakespeares" it takes to equal a democracy? At any rate, we'd best start shipping them over toot sweet. We don't want Iran getting any nucular weapons.

Don't Playa Hate, Computate

Why, oh why must the IT guys be so mean to Old Feemus?

Just because I tell them that the one thingy doesn't seem to be hooking up to the other thingamabob, well, that's no reason to laugh.

Is it?

I'm mean, we're on the same side. I didn't get much sex in high school either.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

I think my heart is broken.

On Wednesday, Bush spoke of a religious awakening in this country. And then he compared the war in Iraq to the Civil War, likening his supporters to the abolitionists.

Guess what that makes the rest of us. Simon LeGreen? We clearly hate freedom.

Now this is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that for the most part we've all gotten used to. Just another day in the is-this-some-kind-of-well-financed-performance-art culture of political rhetoric. After you hear Ann Coulter say that her only complaint about Timothy McVeigh is that he blew up the wrong building and that the government needs to "physically intimidate liberals," well, you just start taking these things with a grain of salt.

I've gotten used to "clash of civilizations," the assertions that Democrats are traitors, the insidiously pervasive "Islamism." I've gotten used to being told that the only way to be a good American is to keep your mouth shut.

But for whatever reason, this quote from Bush broke my heart:

A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me.

We are slipping so far away from the core values of democracy. Pluralism, civil rights, due process. None of these can endure "a confrontation between good and evil."

Illegal surveillance, religious bigotry, torture. All these can be legitimized by "a confrontation between good and evil."

No matter how much our instincts tell us that the good guys don't waterboard their enemies.

My heart broke when I heard this. I don't think I realized how much I identify as an American until I didn't recognize America anymore. I've always gotten a manly lump in my throat whenever I hear someone reading the Declaration of Independence, or the Gettysburg Address, or when I hear the speeches of FDR or MLK. But now I just feel sad all the time.

It's not that we haven't gone through this before. I mean the FBI was stalking Phil Ochs for chrissake and Spiro Agnew said that liberals suffer from "a masochistic compulsion to destroy their country's strength." But this seems different.

It seems different because there is no widespread organized opposition. It seems different because both parties are implicated in it. It seems different because laws have been changed to make us less free. I don't know how we're going to get out of this. And it breaks my heart.

Hey America, come on back to me. I loves you, baby.